Backert Labs Rhumba 1.1 demo: Logistics

Comments

Good news is that it is in the system, but.... now it has a low level hiss and a light pop about three times a second at constant intervals when there was none the first time I had it during the preamp tour.

I checked all of my connections and also now have the preamp hooked up to the amp without anything else plugged into the Rhumba. The level of hiss and pops stay constant at all volumes and get drowned out with higher volumes. Also, the bass slam is not as dramatic on the same tracks, even after ample warm up time.

Any thoughts on what could have changed since the last time I had it?
Could it be the tubes?

The Rhumba was packed very well so no fault to John, or Backert for that matter. That preamp has been shipped all over God's country and back and strange things can happen. I am glad that they are a stand up company that backs their products and I have future interest in having them modify my McCormack.

I figured this would be a 1-day turnaround, maybe a part gone bad. But so far we have done a large number of tests on the Rhumba, on the bench and in various stereo systems, and have not found any problem. It sounds great - it must be psychology working here but I feel like this is my personal favorite Rhumba. Yet it clearly had an issue at Brian's place. Today we will subject it to another test that we came up with last night. We will keep you posted.

First and foremost I have to give the highest of praises to all at Backert Labs for being an outstanding company. We have been in constant contact and they are a real pleasure to deal with.

After putting my Rhumba on the bench and running several different tests trying to recreate my situation they concluded that there was actually nothing wrong with the unit. I am sure they would be willing to go into a little more detail on the tests that they performed. We talked several differnt times about how I had it set up, cabling used and possible interferences and they were not able to recreate the noise that was happening in my system. Hopefully it was some passing bad audio juju I had. I think I will burn some sage just to make sure.

In the end, Bob and Andy offered to put all new guts into my old chassis and send it back and see if that fixes the issue. They also offered to burn in the unit, but I declined for two reasons. First, I felt that it would be a better way to get to know the Rhumba as a whole and second, I thought that it would be fun to give updates on the sound throughout the burn in process as there never was a chance to do that with one set of ears with the demo.

Thanks again Bob and Andy! I greatly appreciate your hard work and dedication.